


A Hymn to Aphrodite

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: DCU, Wonder Woman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Feels, Love, Sappho - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12610900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: 'Etta sees a pair of light circles shining out of the dark outside, eyes that are too large to be a raccoon and too yellow to be coyotes.If she stares Cheetah will melt away into the night. If she goes outside and asks Barbara Anne to come in, to come back, Cheetah will leave.'In which Etta remembers Sappho's poetry and doesn't give up on trying to reach Barbara Anne Minerva.





	A Hymn to Aphrodite

**Author's Note:**

> This is for AJ who, like me, didn't know that Etta Candy/Cheetah was the best thing ever until the Greg Rucka run on the Wonder Woman comics. 
> 
> Written in one sitting and unedited. Also in my defence I am half asleep.

Etta sees a pair of light circles shining out of the dark outside, eyes that are too large to be a raccoon and too yellow to be coyotes. She turns back to her coffee and pretends for a moment that she didn’t see.

 

If she stares Cheetah will melt away into the night. If she goes outside and asks Barbara Anne to come in, to come back, Cheetah will leave.

 

Etta takes a deep breath and tries to tell herself that she can savour knowing Barbara Anne is out there- That she cares enough to come and watch even if she can’t bring herself to stay.

 

It shouldn’t hurt so damn much, not after so long.

 

And yet-

 

Etta thinks about the day they met. About Diana babbling about the Gods’ gifts and lifting about a tonne of steel as if it was tissue. About the lasso in a circle in their hands and SEAR and Barbara Anne pacing the conference room furiously.

 

“Suffering Sappho.” Etta murmurs and isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh or cry.

 

She stops, coffee propped just a bit too far from her lips to drink.

 

She’s never been able to reach Barbara Anne with pleas but then it won’t hurt to try one more time.

 

It won’t.

 

Etta puts her coffee down and wanders idly to the bookshelf. She flicks through a well-thumbed little book of poems then puts it back. She already remembers the words. And she could just read them out into the night and hope but-

 

But it’s also a prayer and that thought sends her back into the kitchen and has her rummaging through drawers until she has a candle and a box of matches.

 

Etta takes a deep breath.

 

She doesn’t turn her head towards the window but she can’t see those shining eyes out of the corner of hers. Cheetah could have already left.

 

And yet-

 

Etta opens her back door and takes three steps out into the dark.

 

-

 

“So,” Barbara Anne said, naked and glorious and unabashed in a way Etta wished she could be. “Which is your favourite?”

 

“My favourite what?” Etta asked and Barbara Anne turned towards her, grinning wicked and sharp.

 

“Sappho. Which is your favourite?”

 

Etta stared at the ceiling. For a moment she wondered what sort of answer would impress the woman in her bed. But she’d held the Golden Perfect and it felt like the truth was still clinging to her, like flakes of gold.

 

“Of all stars the fairest.” Etta said and watched Barbara Anne’s nose scrunch up slightly as she laughed.

 

“Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“Why?”

 

She looked down over Barbara Anne, uncovered and unashamed with her scars and sun spots and sharp sharp smile. When Etta sat up she brought the covers with her, bunched under her arms.

 

“It’s simple, direct, to the point. What’s wrong with that?”

 

“Well it’s missing the rest of the poem.” Barbara Anne pointed out. “And it doesn’t have the oomph of some of her others.”

 

“What’s yours?”

 

“The Hymn to Aphrodite.”

 

Etta sank back towards the mattress. “You mean the one where she tries to bribe a goddess into make her crush love her?”

 

“It’s more than that!” Barbara Anne protested, swatting her thigh.

 

“Uh huh?”

 

“It _is_. It’s about longing and separation and the fickleness of affection-”

 

“And wanting to jump her bones-”

 

“And wanting to jump her bones.” Barbara Anne conceded. “But it’s more than that, you _know_ it’s more than that.”

 

“Uh huh?” Etta replied, a smile threatening.

 

The first kiss grazed her knuckles, the second brushed her thumb.

 

“Oh Venus beauty of the skies,” Barbara Anne began and Etta started laughing.

 

“To whom a thousand temples rise,”

 

“Oh come on-” Etta protested. “You’re not really going to-”

 

But Barbara Anne smiled her sharp smile, gave her little pieces of poetry between slow kisses that rose up her arm and dotted the sheets that covered her torso.

 

She reached the junction of Etta’s neck and shoulders. ‘She soon will court thy slighted charms’ along Etta’s collar bone and when she reached Etta’s cheek-

 

“-thy offerings she despise, She’ll soon to thee make sacrifice. Though now she freeze she soon will burn, And be thy victim in her turn-”

 

Etta leaned forward and caught Barbara Anne’s mouth and the final verse went unrecited.

 

-

 

Etta lights her candle and puts it down in the grass. She thinks about Diana’s Patrons and wonders how she prays.

 

From the corner of her eye she thinks she can see two spots of shining yellow.

 

Etta breathes-

 

It will work or it won’t. There’s only one way to find out.

 

“Celestial visitant, once more,

Thy needful presence I implore,

In pity come and ease my grief,

Bring my distempered soul relief.

Favour your supplicant’s hidden fires-

And give me all my heart desires.”

 

There’s no flock of doves, no sudden light. Barbara Anne does not come, stumbling limping and whole in every way that matters out of the night.

 

Cheetah does not creep up to Etta’s door.

 

But when Etta really looks around her garden the shining eyes of something far too large to be a cat stare back at her from the dark. They don’t blink out and melt away into the black.

 

“I’ll leave the door unlocked.” Etta murmurs though she doesn’t think Barbara Anne will come inside, not now, not yet.

 

She leaves the candle burning.


End file.
